Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus

Patrick Chura (University of Akron)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1959

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

With the publication of Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories in May 1959, twenty-six-year-old Philip Roth put himself on the literary map as an important writer of great social insight, a designation he has enlarged upon for more than five decades. Roth’s first major work gained admiring reviews from leading critics and won the National Book Award in 1960. The short novel Goodbye, Columbus, which describes the failed attempt of Neil Klugman, a product of the Jewish working class of urban Newark, to enter the world of newly wealthy suburban Jews and win the “king’s daughter” Brenda Patimkin, has become an American classic.

On one level, Neil’s pursuit of Brenda—a beautiful …

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2001 words

Citation: Chura, Patrick. "Goodbye, Columbus". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 November 2008; last revised 02 August 2010. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4913, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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